PURPOSE:

The purpose of the assignment is to enable the students to prepare a complete research proposal and subsequently conduct an independent research, relevant to his/her area of interest.

REQUIREMENT:

The need to make intelligent, informed decisions ultimately requires an organisation to engage in research. Remember, not every decision requires research. In this assignment you are required to prepare a causal research proposal based on the following structure:

A) INTRODUCTION

i) Research Background

• Discuss the background of the research that will be conducted. The research should be in your area of interest.

ii) Problem Statement

• Identify, define and discuss the overall research problem that you wish to investigate. You may want to list and elaborate related and relevant sub-problems to support the overall problem. You must provide references from the literature (at least 5 references) to support the problems accordingly. This can be from books, journals or conference proceedings and published reports.

• Justify why these problems need to be addressed and what are the consequences of not addressing it.

iii) Research Objectives and the Scope of the Research

• What are the objectives of the proposed research? The objectives must be addressing the problem. You need to have an overall objective and between 3 to 5 specific objectives.

• What is the scope of the proposed research? The scope must be realistic and manageable within the stipulated time of the research undertaking.

Provide a CRITICAL REVIEW of the literature (at least 25 related and relevant literature is required) in the proposed research areas/topics. Take note that literature review is NOT just recitation of previous research. Outline the weakness of previous research (if there are any) and explain how you propose to overcome them in your research. Develop some propositions based on your preliminary findings and observations.

C) THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Based on the result of your preliminary findings through secondary data analyses, literature review and qualitative research draw a diagram to identify and show the relationship between the independent, dependent, moderator and/or mediator variables. Students should use proper symbols/arrows when drawing the conceptual framework. Indicate the moderator variables and/or mediator variables if any, by properly locating their position in the diagram. (Please refer to any good academic journal for examples of how this is done).

1. How would you conceptualise variables or elements in the conceptual framework, systems architecture, conceptual model or model?

2. Provide an operational definition for each of the variables or elements. (Do not forget to cite the source of reference)

The framework must also be presented in a diagram showing how the variables/elements are inter-related.

Based on the theoretical framework, formulate the main hypotheses of the research (if required). Hypotheses must be properly worded (see published articles for examples).